Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

In other news which flies in the face of things I have been trying to think and do recently, my doctor told me this week that he thinks I am losing weight too slowly.

Excuse?

I had scheduled the appointment after reading about Hilly’s diagnosis of Pseudotumor Cerebri, because I experience many matching symptoms and I wanted my doctor to consider the possibility that my near-daily headaches, whooshing tinnitus, vision abnormalities, and vertigo/balance issues may all be related. Plus, it had been a while since he tried to sell me something or push a prescription which neither of us thinks I need so, you know, I was missing him.

First, he dismissed my complaint of “4-6 headaches per week” with a wave of his hand. “That’s not so uncommon,” he mumbled, and then made a mark on my chart. I imagined it to say, Lame fat girl imagines symptoms. Annoying. Without looking up, he said, “It’s probably just your high blood pressure.”

I sighed a little. “I don’t have high blood pressure,” I countered. That’s when he looked up at me, scanned my bulky, obese frame from tip to toe, and said, “You don’t?”

He didn’t say it with surprise or shock. He wasn’t asking a sincere question. He didn’t sound as though I had given him new information — information which, incidentally, he could have obtained through a quick review of the chart in his lap. He said sarcastically, as though he were dealing with a “slow learner” or trying to make a sardonic point.

I kept my cool, though. I didn’t take it personally, start crying, or grow indignant as I have with doctors in the past. Instead, I just held out my right arm as an invitation.

Generally people are surprised at how “good” my blood pressure readings are, given the fact that I am routinely 150 pounds overweight and exercise in spurts. Usually it hovers around 127/88. This week, as the doctor put down his stethoscope and rrrrrrrrripped open the velcro cuff, he hmmphed. “Actually, it’s quite low.” 110/65.

So, I got a referral to a neurologist and an opthamologist and the other thing I anticipated — a lecture about my weight.

He is pleased that my weight is trending down. That it continues to trend down. That it has done nothing but trend down since I first began seeing him last year. In the year before I met him, apparently he lost around 60 pounds. He did this in a very quick and manly way, by exercising 6 days a week and monitoring his ketosis.

“At your weight, you should easily be able to drop 2 pounds a week, if you just hit ketosis and stay there.”

Uh huh.

He continued, “If you do a lot of on-again/off-again dieting, one day on and the other day off, that could also lead to headaches.”

“But,” I countered calmly, “I’m not really doing that. I’m just trying to lose weight in a way that I think I can maintain.”

At this, he looked me up and down again, slowly, with a tiny little smack of disdain.

“Even if it takes you forever?”

Yes. Even if it takes me forever.